The Maps app in Mac OS X makes it simple to share locations with others, even if the location isn’t defined and just in the middle of nowhere. This is a great trick for many reasons, whether to share a nice spot you found in the city, share with your partner where you left the … Read More
Many of us Mac users forget to update our installed apps to the latest versions, missing out on everything from newly added features, bug fixes, to important security improvements. Sure there are plenty of reasons for forgetting to update applications, whether because we’re too busy to remember, don’t know how to update, or simply don’t … Read More
Some Mac users may wish to disable IPv6 networking support on their machines. This may be desirable to avoid certain networking conflicts, or to increase security for users in higher threat environments, since IPv6 has been found by researchers to be potentially vulnerable to man-in-the-middle and other network attacks. Though most users don’t use IPv6 … Read More
The Finder offers the primary means of navigating the file system of Mac OS X, and though most users will rely entirely on clicking, dragging, and dropping, there are no shortage of keyboard shortcuts to make things even better. If you’re not going to learn them all (and let’s face it, just about nobody does), … Read More
The MacBook Pro with Retina Display takes an ultra-high resolution display and scales onscreen elements down to effectively double the pixel count, providing for ultra crisp images and text on the screen. While the default resolution settings are undeniably gorgeous, you can also choose to manually adjust the screen resolution to either show more space … Read More
Spilling water or another liquid onto a one to two thousand dollar plus MacBook Air or MacBook Pro is a horrible feeling, but before you completely panic, you can take a few proactive steps which may help to preserve the Mac or your data. There is never a guarantee that the Mac will be saved … Read More
The hosts file is included on every computer and used by Mac OS to map IP addresses to host names. Because users may choose to adjust, change, or otherwise edit the hosts file for a variety of reasons, it can be easily subjected to user error, leading to a variety of undesirable network problems ranging … Read More
The Mac has long used the straight quote style for double and single quotes, looking like ” and ‘ respectively. It’s been that way for as long as I remember, but if you’d like to change the quote style to something else, perhaps a bit more fanciful, you can do so through a settings adjustment. … Read More
The Power button on newer MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models has been turned into a button on the actual keyboard, located directly above the Delete key. For the most part, this isn’t an issue, but with the introduction of OS X Mavericks, tapping on that Power button no longer prompts the Sleep / Restart … Read More
The Tags feature added to Mac OS X provides for a simple way to group files, folders, and documents together with drag and drop quickness or keystroke simplicity, but not every Mac user takes the time to use tags, or at the very least, use all the tags that are offered by default in the … Read More
Most Mac users know that hitting Command+W will close an open window, and we’ve covered a handful of other window management keystrokes before, but what about closing the seemingly inactionable dialog windows found with Open, Save, Save As, Export, iCloud, and Print actions? For closing those type of dialog windows, you’ll want to use the … Read More
The next time you’re using the Maps app in Mac OS X to plot a road trip, a walkabout, get driving directions, or just to map out a route, you may want to skip the printer and opt to send the directions directly over to your iPhone instead. In order for this handy direct feature … Read More
If you need to record some simple sound or audio on a Mac, you can do so easily using a bundled app that comes with Mac OS X, without having to download any third party utilities. That app is QuickTime, which may come as a surprise to some users as it’s typically thought of as … Read More
If you need to find out just how fast your wi-fi link speed is, or rather, the speed of which your Mac is connected to a particular wireless router, you can find this data through the Network Utility app that is bundled in every version of Mac OS X. This is really the fastest way … Read More
It’s April Fools Day, that means the internet is full of useless stuff and just about everything should be doubted. But rather than feed you BS, we’ll show you how you can contribute to some general tomfoolery by pranking your friends, family, and coworkers with some fun and harmless little Mac pranks. Ready to goof … Read More
Time Machine is by far the simplest way to keep regular and reliable backups of a Mac, and usually the automatic backups start and finish without any incident. On some rare occasions though, Time Machine may get stuck* on the “Preparing Backup” stage for an inordinately long amount of time, causing a backup to never … Read More
Typically when an external display is connected to a Mac, it will automatically be detected and start working instantly, with the Mac either extending the desktop or mirroring the screen over to the newly attached display output. Sometimes that doesn’t happen however, and when a secondary screen is not detected automatically by the Mac, you’ll … Read More
Longtime users of the Google Chrome web browser may be puzzled to discover the appearance of a mysterious Chrome Notifications menu bar icon, appearing as a little bell icon along with the other Mac menu bar items. Unlike removing some of the other OS X menu bar icons though, you can’t simply drag it out … Read More
